The so-called Pajares variant is the key to the great public work that the Madrid-Asturias AVE represents. Its construction to bypass the Cantabrian Mountains between Asturias and León is one of the largest engineering works in Europe and the world. Its route cuts the old route by 37 kilometers. For this purpose, two tunnels of more than 24 and a half kilometers each have been built and reach depths of more than 1,000 meters to cross the wall of the Cantabrian Mountains. Two decades of work, 13 years late for a pharaonic work that has had to solve many problems and that has changed the landscape of that area forever. Francisco Álvarez Cascos and Rodrigo Rato, one Minister of Public Works and the other Minister of Economy, inaugurated what they were then calling the most important civil works in Europe. After laying the first stone, it was intended to connect Madrid and Gijón in two and a half hours by 2010. The expenditure was then set at 1,990 million, of the 4,000 that it ultimately cost to complete a project of this magnitude in 13 years longer than expected. They did not take into account the complexity of the work, the changes in plans or the problems with water and land. But today it is possible to travel Madrid-Oviedo in more than an hour less and the intention is to further reduce times with the future Talgo Avril train. Something that is already mobilizing, for example, the real estate sector, where they notice that interest in investing in Asturias has increased. The forecast is that the number of travelers arriving in Asturias by train will increase from 230,000 to 600,000 a year. That, in addition to the increase in merchandise that it will entail.